Rubio: Holder needs to resign

posted at 10:56 am on June 21, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

During a breakfast for reporters organized by The Christian Science Monitor on Thursday, Rubio responded “yes” when asked if he agrees with presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the five other U.S. Senators who have called for Holder’s resignation.

“I think we’re at the point of no return,” Rubio said.

I doubt that Marco Rubio alone will move the needle on a Holder exit. It does, however, force more coverage of the dispute over Operation Fast and Furious, including in places where it may not have been well covered before. For instance, the bastion of conservative thought known as the New York Daily News features an opinion column today from two legal experts demanding that the Obama administration and Holder come clean and produce the subpoenaed documents. They point directly to the misleading and shifting testimony of Holder and his staff at the Department of Justice as the underlying need for the disclosure:

For nearly a year and a half, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating why the Justice Department would approve the sale of thousands of weapons and not determine how they would be tracked. Since the beginning, Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration have delayed or denied access to critical information about Operation Fast and Furious. Several times, Holder has had to clarify his testimony about the program, and information came to light directly countering what he had earlier told Congress. Despite having in his possession a subpoena since last October, Holder has refused to turn over more than 130,000 documents relating to Fast and Furious. …

The oversight committee, through a whistleblower, came into possession of six wiretap applications that show top-level Justice Department officials knew about this program but appeared to do nothing to ensure that dangerous firearms were monitored and prevented from harming others. A claim of executive privilege at this moment looks like the administration has something to hide, fueling suspicions rather than getting to the bottom of the matter. …

The fact is that Congress has a right to investigate, and questions about government involvement in a failed operation will persist until the full story is told. That cannot happen if the executive branch refuses to show documents that are directly germane to the investigation.

The longer that Holder and Barack Obama try to hide behind a spurious claim of executive privilege, the more it will become apparent that the country needs another Attorney General. Rubio is right; this shows that Holder, at least, has passed the point of no return.